Vodafone and Telefonica-owned O2 have also bought spectrum to launch 5G services of their own in the country.

Higher capacity

In theory, 5G could offer download speeds of up to 10GBps or even 20GBps – although these are unlikely to be attained for many years if at all.

Most handsets are not yet capable of pushing 4G speeds to their limits, so UK networks are under pressure to convince the public of the need to upgrade having spent more than had been predicted on the spectrum auctioned to date.

As part of its pitch, Three is making the case that 5G will offer a “genuine alternative” to fixed-line copper and fibre services.

Image copyrightThreeImage captionMr Dyson has led Three UK since 2011

“Maybe not for the whole country, but certainly a significant majority of the country, I strongly believe 5G can offer a good enough home broadband experience for people to effectively ditch their copper [or fibre] connection,” said David Dyson, Three UK’s chief executive.

“The challenge in terms of why we can’t do that today is that the mobile networks don’t have the capacity with 3G or 4G. 5G changes all of that.”

Capacity refers to the amount of data that can be handled at any one time rather than the speed.

Three already provides a 4G-based “unlimited data” home broadband service in London, called Relish, which it acquired last year.

But Mr Dyson said the business had to be careful how many people it signed up, to prevent its service degrading.

This, he said, would not be a problem with 5G.

But one industry-watcher said it was still unclear how reliable the technology would be.

“Stability is important for video streaming at HD and Ultra HD quality levels and paramount for the gaming community,” said Andrew Ferguson, from the news site Thinkbroadband.

“Full-fibre services are going to beat 5G as you have a connection as stable as the one that will be feeding the mobile masts and thus the variables of signal strength dropping due to a bus passing the home are avoided.”

The government is currently pursuing a target of “full-fibre” broadband coverage to the whole UK by 2033, in which high-speed optical cables are used to bring data right up to buildings without having to rely on slower copper for part of the journey.

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